New Light-Field Lens by Adobe

Adobe has just developed a prototype lens called the light-field lens.
This new lens has 19 "eyes" that are each positioned at a different angle. Taking a picture with this lens actually takes multiple pictures at 19 different perspectives. So if you're not not so good at keeping a steady hand and keep taking pictures that are partially out of focus, this camera might be really useful for you.

After the picture is taken you can go home and decide which depth, out of the 19 taken, you like the best. Or you can merge all those different focal lengths together to make sure both the background and foreground objects are in focus. It could also allow you to merge those 19 2-D images into something that is closer to 3-D!

So there are two bad things about this. Number one is that I wouldn't be able to use this lens on the camera that I currently have right now. The way it works is that if you have a 100 megapixel camera, for example, then this lens would generate 19 5.2 megapixel images. Come to think of it, I'm not sure if this lens would work with ANY camera. Either way, having a 6 megapixel camera would not really give you very high-quality images with this lens.

Another sad part about this lens is that its just a prototype. Its super cool but it won't be commercially available for at least a few years. Maybe by then I WILL have a 100 megapixel camera.

This video at the bottom shows the lens' capabilities a lot better.


(via Designverb)